The Next Best Thing to a Local Team (Sacramento Kings) is gone as well.

So what's left? As it turns out, plenty.

The NBA playoffs have been supremely entertaining so far. Competitive games, compelling individual performances, the Lakers going in the tank. What more could one want? Then again, this is a place where both baseball teams are at or near the top in their divisions and their ratings points can be counted by the fingers on one hand.

The NBA is providing quite a few reasons to tune in, as it turns out.

* Allen Iverson: The 76ers are on their way out, but Iverson is on the way up and a pleasure to watch.

* Utah Jazz: No matter how far down they get, they are never out.

* Former Warriors: They are everywhere. Chris Mullin and Mark Jackson in Indiana; Avery Johnson, Mario Elie and Jerome Kersey in San Antonio; Tyrone Hill in Philadelphia; Jim Jackson and Brian Shaw in Portland; Todd Fuller in Utah and yes, Latrell Sprewell in New York.

* Dennis Rodman: He is nowhere.

* Marv Albert: On the face, a strange choice. But doesn't it just sound right to hear him doing a big game again?

And while we're on the subject, there's the bad hair derby between the Turner broadcast team of Dick Stockton and Hubie Brown. Brown's Julius Caesar adaptation puts him in the lead so far.

Strike three&lt;

You know what happens when you assume? Baseball is about to find out.

The men who run the national pastime think their game is back. They are so sure of it that they are about to make a huge mistake - cutting off baseball's contract with ESPN because of a dispute over three games in September. It's a blunder that makes one reminisce about the good old days of 1994.

Baseball is looking to terminate its contract with ESPN because the cable network wants to move three Sunday September games to ESPN2 because of conflicts with the NFL. ESPN, by the way, has countersued to keep the deal intact through 2002.

But if the court battle goes its way, baseball will be getting rid of its best partner in ESPN. The network has been very good to the game, from the assignment of top-level talent such as Jon Miller and Joe Morgan to the special programming and dignified coverage it has always provided to the tune of 500 hours a year.

Other cable suitors such as Fox Sports Net and Turner would no doubt love a shot at the baseball cable deal. But the hundreds of millions of dollars that someone else will undoubtedly pay won't be able to buy baseball what it had with ESPN.

Last season, faced with the same situation, baseball took the games back and gave the rights to the local teams for telecast in their own areas. That's one solution, but ESPN2 is another.

"The Deuce" used to be a wasteland of street luge and step aerobics. But ESPN2 has spread to nearly 65 million homes and it's a viable alternative.

ESPN is not without blame here. The network didn't think twice about its other commitments when it signed up for a full NFL season. And while NFL games will pull in more than three times the ratings that Sunday night baseball generates (a 7.3 average for the NFL compared to a 1.7 for baseball), smoothing the way with baseball would have been the right thing to do. Heck, calling the commissioner would have been a nice start.

But this isn't worth baseball's fight. The benefits baseball gets from its association with ESPN are worth much more than the legal satisfaction of throwing a fit over three games.

Baseball doesn't want to play second-fiddle to the NFL, but there's no mistaking the game's place in the sports food chain. And if nobody hits 70 home runs this year, it won't take long for Bud Selig's office to get a reminder.

Around the dial&lt;

It is the weekend of the NBA Draft Lottery, which will air Saturday afternoon at halftime of the San Antonio-Los Angeles playoff game, tip-off time at 2:30 p.m. NBC will air two playoff games Saturday and a triple-header on Sunday. . . .

The next installment of ESPN's "SportsCentury" series on Friday at 4:30 p.m. flashes back to the 1960s. Chris Berman and Charley Steiner will host the two-hour show, which will review the important sporting and social moments of the decade. Brought to you by the same network that just this week named Secretariat the 35th greatest athlete of the century, ahead of Mickey Mantle and Walter Payton. . . .

ESPN has begun airing "SportsCenter" news briefs during ABC's prime-time schedule including brief highlights and a quick score ticker. It's a great idea for those of us who want to check the scores and go back to our regularly scheduled viewing. . .

ABC renewed its deal to telecast the Indianapolis 500 for another five years after staving off interest from Fox. At this point, ABC is a shell of its former sports department and needs every property it can get. It will have considerably more trouble hanging on to the Triple Crown as Fox, CBS and NBC are all interested. The Preakness, by the way, posted an all-time low 3.8 rating last week, but it did better locally, posting a 4.2. . . .

KNBR has reached new one-year deals with Kevin "The Rat" Radich and Bob Fitzgerald after signing Tom Tolbert to a three-year contract a couple of weeks ago. . . .

KTCT-1050 "The Ticket" will air NBA playoff games between the Spurs and Lakers on Saturday and Sunday at 2 p.m. The Ticket will also carry Saturday night's fight between Oscar De La Hoya and Oba Carr at 6:45 p.m.&lt;